For myself, I think I would pick Before Sunrise because it's a little more pure and 'fairy-tale' like where the Jesse-Celine romance is being developed rather than the rather grounded Before Sunset which sheds Before Sunrise's escapism and deals with the aftermath of Before Sunrise.

Before Sunrise, I can't see any reason to pick the other. This set up a perfect love story and built two characters who were seemingly going to end up together. It pressed buttons for me that most others fail to do, and I'm sick of seeing forced love stories in general in movies. This was plain perfect.

SPOILERS:

Sunset ruined everything. Not only did they miss their intended meeting, their lives were essentially ruined by having to settle for other people while secretly yearning for each other.

mavrach wrote:Sunset ruined everything. Not only did they miss their intended meeting, their lives were essentially ruined by having to settle for other people while secretly yearning for each other.

I hear Linklater and Julie Delpy are working on a script for a third "Before..." movie, and I hope they recapture that magic of the first. I didn't have the same problems like mavrach did with Before Sunset, but it felt threadbare and a bit aimless. Before Sunrise was a perfectly crafted little indie film -- while Sunset wasn't made for financial reasons, it could've done with a few more rewrites. It wasn't bad, just didn't have that magic of the first film.

"Aliens conquering Earth would be fine with me, as long as they make me their queen."- Gillian Anderson

Before Sunrise no question. It was my favorite ''romantic'' film until I saw Ball Of Fire and it's the movie that made me dream about going to Vienna+ got me into my German studies. Going to visit the city in a little more than a month with a Viennese girl I met in Berlin.

Apparently, Linklater, Hawke and Delpy have already shot the third film, entitled Before Midnight, quietly in Messinia, Greece. They actually wrapped the film yesterday night, and there's an official still to boot.